>> V.90 last hurrah for analog modems before ADSL and other high-speed technologies move into the mainstream <<
pcworld.com
3Com First Modem Company
to Ship V.90 Modems
by Brian McWilliams, PC World News Radio
February 18, 1998
3Com has announced that its U.S. Robotics-labeled 56-kbps modems supporting the new V.90 international standard are on their way to stores, making 3Com the first company to ship the V.90 modems. The two incompatible 56-kbps technologies, 3Com's x2 and Rockwell's K56flex, had the modem market in an uproar for months, until the V.90 standard brought hope that the two could interoperate.
Some analysts and competitors say shipping first is nothing to be proud of.
"What's going on here is a hasty, panicky, frantic, reckless rush to market," says John Navas, a telecommunications consultant and a 3Com beta tester. "It's the most pell-mell, helter-skelter race I've ever seen."
Navas says 3Com and its competitors see V.90 as the last hurrah for analog modems before ADSL and other high-speed technologies move into the mainstream. So modem vendors are jockeying hard now for 56-kbps market share, with 3Com gaining an early edge in this last grab.
"What [this is] going to do is launch a whole bunch of buggy products on an unsuspecting public," Navas adds. "I'm telling everyone who listens to me, for God's sake don't go out and buy them ... this
is a public beta."
As an industry leader, 3Com should resist the urge to be first to market, according to John Huggins, CEO of modem-maker TDK Systems.
"I think they do have a responsibility to [wait] until the most significant [vendors] have something to test against. That's what the standards process is all about," Huggins says.
On Tuesday, 3Com and Rockwell announced that they had completed interoperability testing of their V.90 products.
But Huggins says those tests were limited, and that more extensive field trials involving Internet service providers and a critical mass of modem vendors should be completed before any vendors market
V.90 products.
Analyst Navas agrees: "They run a few tests ... on a few modems, to a remote server that they have no real control [over] or insight [into], and if it connects and transfers data, they're done! Now, did it
connect well? Did it connect 100 out of 100 times? Was the speed consistently high? Was error control consistently negotiated? Were there any flow-control problems? What was the retrain rate?
What about calls from other places and locations?" Navas adds, "Running real interoperability field tests is a very, very time-consuming, difficult process."
3Com product manager Burk Murray defends the company's testing and its plans to ship V.90 modems.
"The V.90 testing that 3Com performed is the most extensive field trials that we have ever performed." Murray says. "And further, our software upgradeability puts us in a position where, if there are problems, we will very quickly, very easily be able to send out software updates."
Navas, however, says modem companies can't rely on the "ship now, fix later" mentality.
"The [companies'] rationale is, 'These are all flash-upgradeable and we're going to have maintenance releases, so all people have to do is call,'" Navas says. "But ... the overwhelming majority of products
never get upgraded. Either people aren't interested in updating them, or don't know how to do it, or are afraid to do it."
Murray says 3Com's V.90 modems should be on store shelves as early as this weekend. The boxes will have a new look that downplays the former x2 branding and focuses on the V.90 and 56-kbps designations. Flash upgrades for current x2 users will become available around the end of the month, according to Murray. At the same time, 3Com will begin shipping a beta version of its V.90 firmware to ISPs and other owners of its Total Control remote access equipment.
Murray says 3Com's V.90 modems will be backward-compatible to x2, so that users can still get high-speed connections to x2-equipped ISPs that haven't upgraded yet. |
